


Laughing legends

by Quecksilver_Eyes



Series: Narnia Musings [32]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Amarantha - Freeform, Blood, Canonical Character Death, Disabled Character, F/F, It's not nearly as violent as the tags make it seem there's just two battles in it, Like, Lucy and Ed are always trans in all my stories fight me @ staples, Lucy loses her arm, Moderate Description of Violence, Multi, Other, Trans Female Character, Xerxes - Freeform, ever laughing, ever moving, i guess, it's not really detailed but some dude does drown in his blood because he gets his throat cut, lucy grows and lives in Narnia, oh also the witch gets murdered so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-02 08:58:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20273323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quecksilver_Eyes/pseuds/Quecksilver_Eyes
Summary: The prophecy talks of Sons of Adam, Daughters of Eve, talks of flesh and bone and the witch, tall and white and dead in the ground; melting, blooming, her blood wet on the new grass, a cheer in Narnia’s throats. Amarantha, cherry blossomed and wind driven and scarcely ten winters old when the world freezes and stills, expects warriors – with great swords and gleaming armour; two grown men, deep chested and still handed, two women with eyes like steel, taller even than the witch, more terrible, too.or:Amarantha, dryad of the Western Woods, grows up with the Valiant Queen, and is tangled in her laughter, her hands.





	Laughing legends

The prophecy talks of Sons of Adam, Daughters of Eve, talks of flesh and bone and the witch, tall and white and dead in the ground; melting, blooming, her blood wet on the new grass, a cheer in Narnia’s throats. Amarantha, cherry blossomed and wind driven and scarcely ten winters old when the world freezes and stills, expects warriors – with great swords and gleaming armour; two grown men, deep chested and still handed, two women with eyes like steel, taller even than the witch, more terrible, too.

Instead, the prophecy brings this: a boy with trembling hands and wet cheeks, a girl with curls not from this world – barely holding onto her bow – a boy with the witch’s touch upon him, his back bent, his hands empty until his brother hands him a sword that looks much too heavy, too big against his little body, and finally; the smallest of girls, with her mouth full of teeth, the smell of blood and flowers in her hair. The world is not saved by warriors trained in their craft – instead, a boy watches his brother die and drives his sword through a witch, crying, heaving, blood on his hands, the soil around them, the witch’s great terrible – cold, cold, cold – eyes like glass, now, shattering under his blade and the lion’s grinding teeth. Instead, two girls watch the lion die and rise again, instead, the smallest of girls drags her brother back into this life, snot and tears and red blotches on her cheeks. And Amarantha, dazed and half frozen, still, watches it all through a veil of whispering winds and the first warm sun in a hundred years on her leaves.

The four saviours are a pile of bodies on the battlefield, the scent of blood and fireflowers all around them, seeping through the soil; drunk with it. And then, when they have untangled themselves, when four pairs of hands have touched flesh that was bloodied and ajar, just a breath ago, the smallest of girls looks at Amarantha with dried tears on her cheeks, her hands still and dry, and she tilts her head and smiles her smile full of teeth. Amarantha smiles back, draws her lips over her fangs and lets her hair bloom in a flurry of pink as her limbs warm from the roots up. The girl smiles even brighter, and suddenly, all the wind Amarantha lives on blows from the east. The prophesised children laugh, interlocked, dirty and tear stained; Amarantha watches the smallest of girls and all her teeth.

“To the glistening Eastern Sea”, says the lion and Amarantha sways in her winds, thinks of a girl-queen’s name. Lucy. Lucylucylucy, with her teeth and her hands so sure, with her voice unwavering, even as she breathes spring into the world, even as her cheeks are wet and salt crusted and streaked red. Lucy, Queen of Narnia, Lucy, eight years old, with her first set of teeth not yet lost. Lucy, Daughter of Eve, Adam’s bone, Lucy with her hand outstretched towards Amarantha and all that blooms about her.

“Hello”, she says and grabs Amarantha’s hand. “Nice to meet you.” She smiles, smiles, smiles, and Amarantha laughs, her voice still just a breeze, sapling that she is.

Lucy grows taller, louder, quicker under the steady warmth of Narnia’s sun, and Amarantha stretches further into the sky each year, a gust of blossomed wind, a firm wooden body tumbling through the blooming grass, her lips painting freckles on valiant skin; her cheeks, the backs of her hands, the curve of her knuckles, the slope of her jaw, her fluttering eyelids, her wrists. Lucy’s lips are stained cherry red, the taste of it still on her tongue – summer ripe and sweet the way English fruit has never been, and Amarantha laughs with her; all tumbling and dissolving, her lips on Lucy’s cheeks, wet with shrieking laughter, still, the remnants of jumping walls and climbing big old trees full of fruit – and, oh, how Lucy can _run!_

Lucy’s arms are around her now, ever-new freckles blooming where Amarantha’s lips have been, her mouth fitted around laughter, her head thrown back, and Amarantha buries her face in the crook of her neck, spluttering. Lucy smells of iron, still, in patches at her throat, her hands, her hair a blooming of spring against Amarantha’s bark, that warmth creeping from the ground up into the very core of her, until all the snow and all the ice has melted into soft, nurturing water. The dagger is cold at her waist, and Amarantha is half wind, blooming pink and rosé against the Valiant Queen and her laughter, the fruit juice smeared on her lips, her hands.

The battlefield has mellowed out, by now, no longer a meadow glistening red, crusted brown, the witch’s fragile bones scattered on it, like glass shards, glinting in the sun. The blood has sunk down into the soil, has soaked it in iron and all the things spilling from the witch’s mouth, and there is no meadow greener in all of Narnia – rose bushes growing where blood has been spilled, the grass blooming, thriving, reaching for the sun, the little rose dryads playing amongst bones and glass shards and thriving, fertile earth, shrieking with joy, their small hands full of thorns, their hair in big colourful petals, their eyes like glass. It glints when they tilt their heads just right, when they bare their necks and laugh – full bodied and beautiful, ever blooming, ever hungry. Their skin is green, still, where Amarantha’s is a rich, dark brown, thorned where Amarantha’s skin is rough and aching, the echoes of ice still etched into it.

They are new, and hungry, small little things with all the world cradled in their stomachs, their eyes, their arms outstretched towards Lucy, whose hands are calloused, and steady – around a dagger, a thread, a bandage, on Amarantha’s skin, blood and fruit juice dripping from them. The rose dryads, in all their newness, and all that they’ve grown from, reach for Lucy, with their thorned hands and their child voices, pulling her in, and Lucy laughs.

She laughs with her mouth against Amarantha’s hair, laughs a laughter full of sticky sugar and iron and a lion’s roar, and when the little things look at her with their glass eyes, she looks right back, her laughter like the spring sun on her face, her cheeks still salt stained. And Amarantha, half a sapling, still, with the memory of winter hidden deep under her bark and in her winds, stands and watches as Lucy rips her skin open on little thorned hands – laughing, still.

Lucy bandages herself, later, when the sun has set and she lies wrapped in a heavy duvet on the cool stone floor. Amarantha sits on the windowsill, half tangled with the ivy growing all the way to Lucy’s windows, ever green, ever reaching for the sun. Lucy sings something, softly under her breath, a melody not from this world, as she pulls all the thorns from her skin.

She doesn’t wince.

Amarantha holds her face into the sinking sun and closes her eyes, sways with the winds in a flurry of pink, and listens to Lucy sing. “You’re not afraid of them”, she says, when Lucy has finished, and can feel her still, look up at her. “The little roses – don’t they scare you?”

There are lips on her shoulder, soft and careful, Lucy’s chest pressed against her back, and Amarantha rests her head on Lucy’s shoulder. “They’re just children”, Lucy says into her bark, “they just wanted to play.”

Amarantha kisses her cheek and Lucy giggles softly.

Lucy grows and grows and collects scars and freckles and daggers, and Amarantha is a gust of wind all around her, giggling and laughing with her – a legend solid against her lips, warm skin pressed against her bark, and laughter, always laughter, warming her from the roots up.

Kissing Lucy is like tasting spring, early in the morning when the grass is still wet with dew, when the flowers unfurl towards the sun, and the birds sing their songs for all to hear. Kissing Lucy is like getting drunk on her laughter – loud and happy and like bubbles against Amarantha’s skin. Kissing Lucy’s lips, after ten winters, her mouth glistening with peach juice, her throat so freckled, is like holding spring in her arms, calloused hands and copper hair and the smell of iron in her nose.

Amarantha never wants to stop kissing her.

She does, eventually, and Lucy draws her back in, her lashes wet, her laughter so urgent and dripping from her lips that Amarantha can hardly kiss her at all.

“I love you”, Lucy says, her voice heavy with laughter and tears. Amarantha blooms.

Lucy loses her right arm on a battlefield when suddenly, there’s an axe at her shoulder and a grinning man before her, bloodstained, and Amarantha feels as if she might raise the ground to drown them all in it, feels as if the world has stilled and frozen again, the cold like lead, like stone at her limbs. The world trembles under her as all her siblings strain to help, as all the world’s roots dig themselves out of the ground and drag at horses, at men and armour and weapons.

But Lucy drags her dagger across the man’s throat with her left, still steady, still sure, a scream on her lips that must have come from somewhere deep in her chest, her cheeks blotched red and dripping with tears, blood on her armour, her eyes grey and glass and terrible –

And then she faints, a flurry of copper and grey skin, into her brother’s arms, her dagger still firm in her hand, and Amarantha feels like someone ripped her from the ground with all her roots, her winds so still that she can hear the creaking of her bark and the gurgling of the soldier drowning in his own blood at all their feet.

They sew her wound shut while she is still unconscious, while her skin is still grey and her cheeks haven’t yet dried. There’s a young faun and a younger naiad, with trembling hands and big eyes, royal blood on their skin and Amarantha is a full, solid body, her hand tangled with Lucy’s left, barely breathing.

_Please_, she thinks as the Magnificent paces behind her, his helmet on the floor, his hands shivering, and doesn’t know what she’s begging for. _Lucy, please._

Fireflower juice does not restore limbs, and so, when Lucy wakes up, heaving, there is a new scar along her shoulder where her arm used to be, red and raised and straining, and Lucy runs her fingers over it.

“Huh”, she says and Amarantha thinks she might burst into tears. She doesn’t.

_Xerxes_. Little red dwarf with their hair and beard in braids, with grime all over their hands and their leather apron, their face freckled, bursting with it. Amarantha worries the name over, tastes the way it feels on her tongue – strong and earthy and full of metal, their voice calm in a way Lucy’s never is, and she curls herself around her queen and her flushed cheeks and how she hasn’t taken the prosthetic off, yet. Amarantha giggles softly.

“What a pretty dwarf”, she says and Lucy flushes even darker.

“Yeah”, she says, her fingers brushing along the metal of her prosthetic. “They really are, aren’t they?”

Amarantha hums and kisses Lucy’s palms, something soft and careful – first the one made of flesh and bone, then the one made from fire and metal and determination. “And they did it all by themselves”, she says, half wind now, blooming against Lucy’s skin. Lucy watches her, with bright eyes and a smile on her lips, her back curved.

“Do you think they’ll be at the dance?”, she asks, and Amarantha draws her into a kiss, soft and slow, with the sun on their skin and Lucy’s hand curled into her hair.

Later, Lucy takes the prosthetic off and pulls Amarantha into a kiss that would have bruised human lips, trails of salt on her cheeks, her eyes glassy with tears.

“Distract me”, she says, breathless, “distract me, Amarantha, please.”

Amarantha obliges, bows her head, paints freckles all over Lucy’s skin until the ache in her shoulder is a numb throbbing, until she laughs through her tears.

Xerxes is at the dance, tucked into a corner full of shadows, out of place amongst dryads and naiads and spirits cheering their love into the sun, their feet bare, their mouths full of laughter. But they’re there, drawn back as they are, tentatively talking to Lucy while Amarantha curls herself around them, just a blossoming wind, the echoes of silent laughter. And Lucy smiles, smiles, smiles, has lost all her first teeth by now, and her arm too, and she sways back and forth, her eyes on Xerxes and their braids, Xerxes and their soft voice, Xerxes, with their hair like fire and their hands as calloused and rough as Lucy’s are.

And Amarantha is solid against Lucy’s back, by now, tilts her head and all that blooms on it, watches as her blossoms flutter in Xerxes’ hair.

What a pretty dwarf. She wonders what they kiss like.


End file.
